In my bubble—the awesome thing that blocks almost everything I don't want to care about—there are only the problems that a middle class white kid would go through. No homeless people, uncomfortable subjects or things like that. Only fluff and the occasional stop sign. The advantages to living in my bubble are that I can chose what comes in and what I want to talk about and banish anyone who disrupts my tranquility. Unpleasant things like poverty and violence do not penetrate my bubble; my bubble is only penetrated when I voluntarily reflect on things I've seen that have the power to disturb my bubblelife. When my bubble gets penetrated, I help at homeless shelters and animal shelters. I also donate clothing and stuff. I’m grateful for my bubble, but I recognize that I can’t live in it for my entire life, because if I’m oblivious to the problems of the world, I won’t be able to help solve them. 

A culture bubble allows one to block out things that they don't want to think or know about. I think that culture bubbles are good but should be popped occasionally. According to an article on Psychology Today, “The “cultural bubble” refers to the socio-cultural context in which we typically immerse ourselves.” My culture bubble is thick and hard to pop. In it, most people only care about hot girls and video games. In my school bubble, there is Socratic thinking, lots of soccer and the occasional hot-girl talk. The reason it is so hard to pop my bubble is because I don't have to pay attention to everyday poverty; I have seen it all my life from a distance, but it does not directly impact me. However, when I go into the city without a friend, I notice all of it and I don't like it. This is healthy because it prompts me to ask questions about what is going on and why poverty exists. And it’s important to ask these questions because once we ask them, we become more active and try to solve the problems.

I’m never grateful in the moment that something penetrates my bubble, but later on I realize that it might be helpful. One example of this was when I was to San Francisco and my brother didn't eat his sandwich; we wanted to give it to a homeless person. At first, she didn't look up, probably because she thought that we were the cops telling her to move. After she realized that we weren't the cops, she was nicer to us. Later when I thought back on her gratitude, the experience made me want to help at a homeless shelter. I first realized that I wanted to help homeless people when I was doing something I love—camping. I loved sleeping under a tent for 3 or 4 nights. But after that, I got home sick and I started to think, “What if I didn’t have a home to return to. What would that feel like? Would I still be homesick?” As a camper, I could say, “I want to go now.” She can't say that for herself. I realized that the things I take for granted like my house, food and running water, are things that I should be grateful for.

Bubbles are good for children, but as children get older, we need to slowly dismantle the bubbles. On Child Youth and Family, it says that, “All kids need the basics of life - like food, warmth, shelter and clothing. But they also need to feel loved and secure.”  I think that all people need this, not just kids. But bubbles are good for kids because, if you go into detail about all the suffering and poverty in this world, it might scare them. Still, it’s important for kids to know how privileged they are to have these basic things. That same website lists these as kids’ everyday needs:

feeding them when they're hungry
keeping them warm, dry and safe from danger
helping them if they are in pain, scared or upset
providing family routines
making sure there is always someone you trust to look after them.

Kids need all of this, but, at some point we need to dismantle the bubble so that the kid makes their own choices and suffers the consequences of their actions.  They need to be independent and self reliant. The bubble is sort of the net that catches you if you fall, but if you don't have that bubble then you hit hard rock if you make bad choices. We need to remove the bubble so that the kid knows how it feels to smash into that hard rock and so that they won't want to smash into it.

In conclusion I think that the bubbles are amazing at blocking things; but that's not always what we want so, over the years, we have to dismantle the bubble, take down the fluff and scaffolding, so the kid gets comfortable being self reliant.